


Dear Lenochka

by Aeolian



Series: So close that your eyes close as I fall asleep [3]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Epistolary, F/F, Femslash February Trope Bingo, Marriage, Memory Loss, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time Travel, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 01:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3362627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeolian/pseuds/Aeolian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dear Lenochka,</p><p>In your hand is my wedding ring. It is also a time machine. If I could, I would set your fixed moment for a happier time--the night of our wedding or our first kiss, or my favorite, a sunny May afternoon between customers, you with your golden hair spilling over a shoulder as you polish our gleaming countertops, me with my hands sticky with bread dough. But sadly, all I can give you is the moment of my death. And for that, my dear Lenochka, I am truly sorry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Letter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Fellow man! Your whole life, like a sandglass, will always be reversed and will ever run out again, - a long minute of time will elapse until all those conditions out of which you were evolved return in the wheel of the cosmic process. And then you will find every pain and every pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole fabric of things which make up your life. This ring in which you are but a grain will glitter afresh forever._  
>  \- "Notes on the Eternal Recurrence" by Friedrich Nietzsche
> 
> NOTE: I haven't really tested the work skin, so if it's hard to read, or you are on a data plan, hit the "Hide Creator's Style" button (and let me know so I can fix it!).

Dear Lenochka,

If you are reading this, I am so sorry. You will be angry at me for leaving your side, and I wish I could stay there forever. But there is a spiral path we must march along, and you must walk where I cannot.

In your hand is my wedding ring. It is also a time machine. Implausible? Sure. The product of an unwell mind? Perhaps.

But whatever it is, it works. There are three simple rules that you must remember:

  1. There are two rings.
  2. Only two rings can exist at any given time. First in, first out.
  3. There are two points in space-time you can travel to: the first is the time and place you received the ring, the second is the time of the other ring.



If I could, I would set your fixed moment for a happier time--the night of our wedding or our first kiss, or my favorite, a sunny May afternoon between customers, you with your golden hair spilling over a shoulder as you polish our gleaming countertops, me with my hands sticky with bread dough, listening to the radio warble. It is a moment of no significance, no particular weight. But is a moment of peace and love, something I wish I could give you to tide you over between the miseries to come.

But sadly, all I can give you is the moment of my death. And for that, my dear Lenochka, I am truly sorry.

Yours faithfully,

N

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paper texture by: [Bashcorpo](http://bashcorpo.deviantart.com/art/Grungy-paper-texture-v-6-37649221)  
> AO3 won't let me use @font-face, so please download and install [Harting](http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Harting) to see my formatting.


	2. Letter 2

Dear Lenochka,

After reading my first letter, you may ask—how do I know what will come? After all, according to Rule 3, the ring can only travel to the past and present, never the future. Well, yes and no, but our time is short, so I will focus on the main issue—what you must watch for.

Let me explain as it was explained to me: the human mind was not built to understand the true nature of time-space. It is the reason why we treat time and space as separate entities when in fact, they are one and the same. It is the reason also we see the arrow of time pointing in only one direction, and space with no absolute axes. The ring, however, groks what we cannot. It is both conduit and contrivance. It pulls the ring-wearer between two points in time-space, and it allows us to remember it. The future will happen, but we do not remember it. Strange? Not to the ring.

Which brings us to Rule 2: the two people who have the rings at any one moment in time are the two people who were the last to receive them.

I knew the end was to come the day you looked at me as if I were a stranger, because the moment you lost your memory of me was the moment a new owner of the ring arrived at our own time, and yours disappeared from your finger. You have always been more optimistic than me, love, so you may ask: perhaps they come in peace. After all, why not?

I have seen him once or twice as he pursues us. Leonid Novokov is his name, and he would not have come by your ring honestly, or bloodlessly. I do not know the true name of the organization that made us as we are, the secret arm of the Soviet war department that created its greatest weapons, including the rings, including Leo. Including us. The few who know it in the West call it the Red Room. And Leo is far stronger than I remember, during our time together in the Red Room. I do not know what happened to him between then and now, but I cannot hope to defeat him, my darling Lenochka. You are the spider's venom, I but the weaver. I must wear the ring to ensnare him, but only you can deliver the killing bite. My only hope is that I wove the net tightly enough for you.

Yours faithfully,

N

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paper texture by: [Bashcorpo](http://bashcorpo.deviantart.com/art/Grungy-paper-texture-v-1-22965919)  
> Please download & install the font [Satisfaction](http://fontzone.net/font-details/satisfaction) for best results.


	3. Letter 3

Dear Lenochka,

I saw him again today, but unfortunately, so did you. You cried and begged me to explain what was going on, but I am a selfish woman, my love. They say ignorance is bliss, so I lied to keep you happy for a little while longer. But I will type a little here, because why not? One of us should remember our history.

It began for me decades in the future. I had defected from the Red Room at that point, working to erase the red in my ledger for another secret organization I will not name. I had thought of you rarely during that time, and only in the context of the Red Room, so when you came running toward me across my New York rooftop, I had only one thought in mind--that you had come to capture or kill me. It still gives me nightmares, that I had raised my hands to kill a woman seeking sanctuary. What if I had succeeded? What if I really had killed you, and you had tried time and again until you could give me the ring?

Because that is how it went, the first time. You closed my fingers around the strangely-patterned device, before collapsing in my arms, blood soaking through both of our shirts. Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw your killer, standing on a nearby rooftop, aiming a rifle at me--it was you, but exactly the way I remember you as a teenager. Bewildered, I ran. You followed me across rooftops and through alleys until you trapped me in a parking structure and imploded it. I died pinned by pieces of rubble.

I came back to consciousness as you died in my arms, your younger self aiming a rifle at me from another rooftop. Disoriented, I dodged too slowly and your bullet grazed my side. You led me on the same route as before, but when you tried to hem me in the parking structure, I jumped out. Your bullet caught me right between the eyes.

Again, I awoke on my roof and again you chased me across Manhattan. But the predator became prey this time, and I garroted you with your own rifle strap. Yet you did not die--you disappeared. I tried to follow you, to finish the deed, pulling on one of two indescribable strings in my mind. But I pulled the wrong one, and I ended up back on the rooftop.

I do not know what the scientific explanation is. Perhaps the event was now fixed in the fabric of space-time. Perhaps I somehow caused anomaly. All I know is, you were not there, leveling a rifle at my face, and yet you were there, bleeding out in my arms.

I have tried since then to save you, to staunch the blood and start your heart, but not that time. That time, to my everlasting shame, I screamed at a dying woman, shaking you as if to knock free any last secret of the ring, to no avail. You were too far into the next life to answer me in this one.

I am not a good person, Lenochka. This, you must remember.

Yours faithfully,

N

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paper texture by: [Bashcorpo](http://bashcorpo.deviantart.com/art/Grungy-paper-texture-v-13-82031622)  
> Please download & install the font [Cousine](http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/cousine) for best results.


	4. Letter 4

Dear Lenochka,

Today we learned that Leo was sent either by the Red Room or by a copycat. It took three and a half hours for him to return after we incapacitated him, a little longer than the report-wipe-deploy protocol they used on you.

The delay is how I finally caught up to you. You killed a younger version of me, and I had to jump backwards in time, to a pocket in time when I was still alive. (Remember, love, this is one way to goad our prey towards the trap: a ring-wearer cannot be older than when they died.) Convinced you were going to kill an even younger me, I jumped backwards in time to preempt you. Instead, I found a team of Red Room scientists, ringed around the brainwashing chair, where you lay strapped in.

I killed them, Lenochka. I killed them all. Sometimes I kill them quickly, with kindness. Other times I draw it out, reveling in their screams. Once I stole an ICBM, and after evacuating everyone else, I launched it at the facility.

The first time I went back in time, I almost killed you too, my darling. I wanted to end it all, this never-ending circle in time. But you looked so young in that chair and helpless too. I could not follow through. I unshackled you from the chair, and while you stood there looking at me with guileless eyes, I told you I was your new handler. You followed me without a backwards glance.

The first time, you had to seduce me with your willowy grace and clever tongue. Our first marriage was perfect, for all the tears and broken plates, polishing our sharp edges and filling in the gaps until we fit together like puzzle pieces. After that, how could I not seek you out? I could not help but woo you with the expensive clothes and cheap diners that you like, the fast bikes and slow dances, the good books and terrible, awful jokes.

"How do you always know what to say?" you ask, not knowing that we have already had this conversation ten, twenty, a thousand times.

Does that make me no better than the men and women who put entire lives in our heads with electrodes and intravenous chemicals? Of course. Yet I wonder; did I have a choice when you initiated me into this endless cycle? Did I have a choice when we were both teenagers for the first time, when you first dared me with your sly eyes and sharp smile?

How much of our choices are truly our own, and not memories washed away by the River Lethe?

Yours faithfully,

N

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paper texture by: [Bashcorpo](http://bashcorpo.deviantart.com/art/Grungy-paper-texture-v-8-37941453)  
> Please download & install the font [Satisfaction](http://fontzone.net/font-details/satisfaction) for best results.


	5. Letter 5

Dear Lenochka,

What the tongue cannot speak and the mind cannot recall, the body knows as the truth. Here is an example. Like twin stars in gravitation orbit, we always eventually meet in between. Sometimes my feet bring me to you for no reason at all. Sometimes I find you on my doorstep, looking confused. Here is another: New York was not the first time I have been given a ring. Do I know when and from whom? No, of course not, just as you do not either. But here are a few truths:

  1. Teleportation is not instantaneous.
  2. If you look at the Earth from the North Pole, the Earth spins counter-clockwise. This means that a ring-wearer will always end up northwest or southwest of their target, depending on the Earth's tilt.
  3. Just as it does with everything else, practice makes perfect applies to time travel as well.



When Leo first started time-jumping, he ended up twenty kilometers away. He has now improved to a few kilometers, but this is only after nearly a hundred jumps. The first time I jumped to you in the Red Room, my love, I landed within a meter.

I am not conceited enough to believe in innate talent, nor do I need to look far for an explanation. I see you turn unconsciously towards the direction of Leo's arrival each time, just as I do. The rings have developed an additional sense in us, just as years of training in the Red Room have honed our fighting techniques into instinct. Our bodies remember.

Yours faithfully,

N

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paper texture by: [swav](http://angelaacevedo.deviantart.com/art/Texture-Notebook-Paper-3-46495593)  
> The font is Times New Roman. If your computer doesn't have it for some reason, reinstall the default fonts ([PC](http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-desktop/how-to-restore-windows-7-default-fonts/73a8eb3e-3189-4514-b87c-18fcdca4fe26)) ([Mac](http://osxdaily.com/2011/10/03/installing-removing-fonts-in-mac-os-x/))


	6. Deleted letter

[This letter was reconstructed from data recovered from a wiped hard drive]   
  
Dear Lenochka,

I have died countless times, by your hands, by Leo's, by my own. I do not regret a single one of them--for each time, after I bury you, I have a chance to meet you anew, to fall in love once again.

The time comes soon when Leo will learn more from his ring than I can learn from him. When that day comes, I will need to give the ring to you, to die a final time. I hope it will not be too late. I hope it will never happen.

It is on nights like these, when the moonlight kisses your bare legs, and all the worry on your face smoothes away, that I wish I could believe in a higher power. Perhaps I will walk with you again on Judgment Day, or the Wheel of Dharma will turn again, casting me in a new body to seek yours.

Sometimes I want to burn these letters, to hide the truth from you. Sometimes I want to plunge the dagger in your throat myself. I am not sure which scares me more--that I can justify it to myself so easily, or that I would do it not out of hate or anger, but out of love.

Yours faithfully,

N  
  
**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The font is Courier New. If your computer doesn't have it for some reason, reinstall the default fonts ([PC](http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-desktop/how-to-restore-windows-7-default-fonts/73a8eb3e-3189-4514-b87c-18fcdca4fe26)) ([Mac](http://osxdaily.com/2011/10/03/installing-removing-fonts-in-mac-os-x/))


	7. Letter 6

Dear Lenochka,

A social psychologist in the future will conduct an experiment. He will show a picture of two curtains to a subject, and asks them, which side will contain porn--the left or the right? Here is the important part: neither side contains a picture. Only after the subject chooses a side, will a computer randomly shuffle images, and then show the subject their pick. The social psychologist will hypothesize that, on average, subjects will have a better than average chance of choosing the side with porn. He will be correct.

Perhaps I should amend my statement: the future will happen, we just need proper motivation to remember it. Will this jog your memory? We married once in the future, lawfully, on the steps of New York's City Hall, right where anyone could see. Do you remember? We were surrounded by friends, some of whom cried harder than we did when we slipped the rings on each other's hand, kissing finally as woman and wife.

By now you have probably noticed a number of inconsistencies in my account. If you no longer have the ring, who were you running from when you gave me the ring? If Leo is from the future, then how can either of us travel to my past? When I returned to the Red Room, should there not have been another Natasha? What happened to her? How many of us are there at any given time? How many other ring-wearers, past and future, walk among us, right at this very moment?

This is the future neither of us remember: At some point in our tangled timeline, you give your ring to me. I am the one who then gives it the Leo.

Let me explain. After your ring disappeared, my fixed point stayed the same. However, it would not be you I see on another rooftop, it would be me. After following myself back to the Red Room, I would free myself, yes, but I never took me from the facility. After all, why should I? I am not a good person, and I certainly have no love for myself.

Instead, it was Leo who led me from the Red Room, mimicking, it seems, what he learned from our relationship, well enough that I gave him your ring during one of my lifetimes.

I have tried to stop it from happening, my darling Lenochka. Bullets curve, acid evaporates, cars swerve preternaturally. It seems, just like when you gave me your ring, this event cannot be changed. I have never been able to stop him, during our years on the run, and perhaps this is why. The future happens, and the body remembers.

Yours lovingly,

N

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paper texture by: [Bashcorpo](http://bashcorpo.deviantart.com/art/Grungy-paper-texture-v-2-22966059)  
> Please download & install the font [Trypewriter](http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Kingthings-Trypewriter) for best results.


	8. Letter 7

Dear Lenochka,

Every ancient civilization agonized over what to bring into the next life. Should they bring sheep and cattle to feed themselves? Their finest raiment? And what currency should they bring for safe passageway? Modern scholars scoff at the idea. We bring nothing beyond the grave, not even ourselves.

Yet, what else would we call what we do? Each jump brings us into the past, where we will live through time in a more or less linear fashion. Is that _not_ another life, another turn of the wheel?

So what can you carry with you to the next life?

  1. Your body, as is.
  2. Anything attached to your body. Clothes, backpack, strapped weapons, any inanimate object you are holding on to. The ring.
  3. Your heart, your mind, your memories.



Leo is trapped in a window of time, just as I am. The upper limit is 2005, when his appearance will cause either a paradox or both rings to disappear. You should probably avoid it as well. There is no advantage to being downstream from him. His lower limit is more porous--I have made it very difficult for him to jump before 1991, but if the need is dire enough, he will appear. If I have timed it right, your fixed point will be before this time, where you will have the advantage over him. Remember--a ring-wearer cannot be older than his time of death.

I send you on your way with nothing but these letters and my love. I wish I could give you something of worth.

Yours forever,

N

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paper texture by: [overdosse](http://overdosse.deviantart.com/art/13-HQ-Old-paper-Textures-66526257)  
> Please download & install the font [Satisfaction](http://fontzone.net/font-details/satisfaction) for best results.


	9. Epilogue

_It's one of those January days where the clouds can't decide between sleet and freezing rain. As a result, the bakery has been quiet all day, with only bowls of rising dough and a book to keep Natalie company._

_The jingle of the door is a pleasant surprise, as is the woman who enters, doe-legged and vixen-eyed. Natalie can't help but be drawn to her, book all but forgotten._

_The stranger seems surprised too. "I'm sorry, I wasn't sure--"_

_"We're open," says Natalie a little too quickly._

_"Oh, good," she says, flustered, "I'm not actually sure why I came in. Um, do I know you from somewhere?"_

_Natalie studies her face. She's sure she'd know this face anywhere, and yet..._

_"I'm not sure," she admits._

_The stranger tucks her hair behind her ear, plays with the end of it. "Sorry, that was rude. I'm Helen."_

_"Natalie," says Natalie, tucking the book aside, "Well, Helen, would you like some tea while you decide what you came in for?"_

_"I'd like that," says Helen, her smile shy but crooked._

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate endings considered and scrapped include: pulling a Memento; Dear Natashka, this is my wedding ring and also a time machine; Yelena and Leonid walked hand in hand into a bakery; etc.
> 
> The [porn experiment](https://somerandomstuff1.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/an-explanation-of-the-experiments-within-bems-esp-study/) is 100% real, and by a pretty broadly-respected social psychologist to boot (or at least I remember him being in a number of my psych textbooks). The problem is, no one else has been able to replicate his results. Retrocausality probably doesn't exist, but it's a fun thought exercise.
> 
> Please let me know what giant gaping plot holes I've left laying around. I'm going to go stick my head in the freezer now.


End file.
